I’ve never been a smoker, but after the 8.2 earthquake, I understood why my friend Alex needed a cigarette to calm down. It took a while to find some, but after buying 6 packs, and visiting most of our friends and Alex’s family that we worried about, he declared that he was going back to his apartment to get some important stuff. “Are you sure?” I asked, “I think its still dangerous.” He assured me he would be ok, and offered to go to my apartment if I didn’t want to go in. I agreed, but told him that I had locked the doorknob lock to my apartment and didn’t have keys. “Don’t worry. I have a credit card and strong legs,” he told me. I requested my passport, my computer and my phone charger, explaning where he could find them. I was glad our apartments . “There was also a stack of clean clothes on the bed. It’s probably on the floor now, but if you can find it that would be great.” I emptied my backpack onto the back seat of his jeep and handed it to him. He walked toward the apartment building, where some families had already set up tents in the parking lot, by the light of his cellphone.

Alex finally gets to smoke

I sat in the jeep, not knowing what to do. Then my cell phone buzzed. My mother had finally responded to my Whatsapp message. I felt calmer. I got a facebook message from Martin, my friend who had been working in a frozen yogurt shop at the mall in Iquique. He was fine and was going to spend the night with some French students he had met in the mall parking lot. My boss from the Interdisciplinary Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies called from Santiago to check on me. Another professor from the center called a few minutes later. Andrea wrote again, asking if everything was ok with me. I assured her all was well, though it had already been 15 minutes and I was starting to worry about Alex as the aftershocks continued every few minutes. Finally, after what felt like an hour, but was probably only 20 minutes, I saw Alex’s shadow, a man with a headlamp, a backpack on his back, and one in each hand, walking toward the jeep. “I got all the necessities” he told me: he had brought my passport and charger, but realized he had forgotten my computer. “I’ll go back for it tomorrow,” I told him. He had also grabbed the stack of clothes and my running shoes which had been near the sofa (good thing I leave things lying around). He said the level of water in the fish tank hadn’t seemed to drop. I hoped he was right.

We drove back to his aunt’s house, where much of the family had assembled. One daughter and one son still lived at home, and another had brought her husband and two children to the house. We took his another to the house he lived in with his wife and two children to pick up the rest of the family, some clothing, blankets, and their computers. His wife and children were waiting outside for us when we arrived. Though the house wasn’t in danger of collapsing, it was a night when no one wanted to sleep alone. The more people the better. Even if it meant sleeping on a kitchen floor, everyone just wanted to be with their families as the 4.0-5.5 Richter aftershocks continued.

a selection of that night's earthquakes

We returned to the house where just outside the gate everyone was sipping rum and coke and talking. Like the many families that were sitting just outside their homes, some with bonfires, some visiting with neighbors, inside seemed much scarier than outside. For one night, the desire to close off a family’s inside space no longer existed (as I wrote about here). The street was more comforting than walled in space of the home. Around 2am, we decided to go inside. The four young children were all sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the living room, with the father of two of them on the couch. The rest of use sat a few feet away at the big table playing Uno and drinking the Rum and Coke Alex had rescued from his apartment. No one wanted to sleep. Every 30 minutes or so we would all feel a rumble of the earth, and sit up straight at attention, hoping it would subside and not grow into a tremor necessitating going outdoors again. By 4 am, I had moved to a sleeping bag in a side room, and drifted off to sleep while Alex and some of his cousins stayed awake to “keep watch.” The truth is, as exhausted as I was, I didn’t really want to sleep either. It wasn’t so much that “keeping watch” would really help anything, but the thought of waking up to another violent shaking almost kept me from drifting off. Almost.